Gaming Innovation

Gaming innovation is dead, we haven't seen anything ground breaking in gaming in a long time. There's several factors that killed gaming innovation.

Multiplayer is probably the #1 culprit. Look at games like Call of Duty, Activision is essentially releasing a map pack with a few extra weapons in it for $60. No one buys the next Call of Duty for the campaign, they buy it for the multiplayer, so they can frag their opponents on something that could of been a DLC for a game they already had.

Re-releases, ports and remakes is another reason. Why make a new game when you can re-release one of your best selling ones? Nintendo is guilty of that, several times over. Starfox 3DS is Starfox 64, which in turn is the first Starfox game for the SNES. Why would you buy it more than once? I can understand if you never owned it before, but you realize that buy buying the same game over and over just tells the developers that you want the same thing. If people stopped buying these re-releases and remakes that would send a message saying that we want a new game. DO you want a new Starfox game? A real Starfox game? Well stop buying the first one a million times over! Mega Man X4, is one of my favorite games, but I'm not going to buy it a million times. I bought it once on the Playstation and then bought Mega Man X Collection. I wouldn't buy X4 again if it was re-released on the Playstation Network. I already have it, I don't need each iteration of it.

Unnecessary sequels and spinoffs. Guitar Hero if probably the best example of this, releasing the same game constantly with different songs. Then charging a ridiculous price (I think it was like $5) for 3 songs per DLC. Rock Band had the better idea, make the songs transferable, so you're not constantly changing discs. The Mario Party is also guilty, its the same game 8 times. I can understand if one was released per console generation, but did we really need so many? This goes back to Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 3 is on the way and has no real differences before it and it's predecessor other than new maps and weapons, something that should be a $10 DLC not a $60 game.

Not taking risks is another hindrance, look at Sonic and each game he's been in since Sonic Adventure. Sonic Team tried something different in each game and you gotta give them credit for that. Yeah there were some games that were bad, but at least they tried to do something different. Look at Mario, Nintendo stays in the safe area, essentially staying the the Mario 64 territory and not straying too far from it. Sunshine was probably as innovative as they went with Mario. Because Galaxy was just Mario 64 in space and then they made a sequel to that because there was really no where to go after going into space. Legend of Zelda too, same thing each game, collect the Triforce, kill Ganon. Look at Metroid, probably the most risk taking out of all of Nintendo's franchises. Metroid Prime was great and it was very story driven and pretty innovative for how the series panned out over the trilogy. Metroid Other-M, while not well received, tried to do bring back that old school Metroid feel but making it more how we would see Samus fight. Mirror's Edge, another game that took a risk, while there are some problems with it, the game still fared well.

Sandbox games are really a localized trash heap, mainly staying in Rockstar's front yard. When you stick someone in an environment that allows them to do whatever they want, they will do whatever the want. However the problem with sandbox gaming is that there are no consequences to your actions. You either get arrested or "killed" but you respawn outside a police station or hospital with a clean slate and can do it all over again. Need for Speed Carbon, while a racing game was also a sandbox game, and it had consequences to your actions. If the police were after you, you would have to lay low and switch to a different car because the police would remember your car and would always look for it, forcing you to change it's color/appearance. And if your car was impounded 3 times, you lost that car for good and would need to buy another. In games like Grand Theft Auto, there are no consequences like that. You don't get a record or life imprisonment, you're let out the next day and no one even remember the mayhem you caused.

tl;dr version: Developers copy/paste everything knowing gamers are stupid and will pay full price for something that should be DLC.